Note to readers: I know
this is a lengthy issue, and looking back I realize I should have sent an
edition Saturday night and then another one today. But with impeachment
and Livingston still the hot news and with readers leaving on vacation as
each day passes this week, I don't want to delay any of this material.

>>> "The Best Notable
Quotables of 1998: The Eleventh Annual Awards for the Year's Worst
Reporting." Go to http://www.mrc.org
and click on the "Best of NQ" button, or go directly to the Best
of NQ page: http://www.mediaresearch.org/bestofnq1998.html.
Either way, you'll find both: a) The Print Edition sent to subscribers.
The annual special 8-page version of Notable Quotables with award winners
and runners-up in 14 categories as judged by a panel of 50 radio talk show
hosts, magazine editors, columnists, editorial writers and other leading
media observers who generously gave of their time. Web Bonus: RealPlayer
video and audio clips of the biased quotes from television. Don't just
read the bias -- hear and see it too. b) Special Web Edition. See which
quotes visitors to the MRC Web site voted as the most biased of the year.

Time magazine would have "honored" Hillary Clinton, but instead
decided to equate the law-enforcer with the law-breaker by naming Bill
Clinton and Ken Starr its "Men of the Year." Actually, Time did
not consider the two worthy of equal censure as the magazine clearly
blamed Starr more than Clinton for what the nation experienced in 1998 as
its cover story asserted that while "Bill Clinton did something
ordinary" in lying about sex, it was Ken Starr who "did
something extraordinary" by pursuing it as a crime.

On Sunday's Meet
the Press Time Managing Editor Walter Isaacson let slip his pro-Hillary
bias, a tilt which showed up in the magazine. Asked by Tim Russert who
qualifies as the Man of the Year, Isaacson explained:
"It's that person or persons who's
affected the news the most, effected our history the most for good or for
ill. Had it been an award, had it been somebody we wanted to honor, you
know there are a lot of other people from Mark McGwire to Hillary Clinton,
but in the end we had a pretty messy year. I think Washington went totally
mad and these two people are symbols of that."

Indeed, looking at
the time.com Web site I learned that the Man of the Year package in the
December 28/January 4 issue includes a story headlined, "The Better
Half: During her husband's greatest crisis, Hillary has come into her
own."

Here's how Nancy
Gibbs opened and closed Time's lead story summarizing why they made
Clinton and Starr the Men of the Year:
"Bill Clinton did something ordinary: he had
an affair and lied about it. Ken Starr did something extraordinary: he
took the President's low-life behavior and called it a high crime. Clinton
argued that privacy is so sacred that it included a right to lie so long
as he did it very, very carefully. Starr argued that justice is so blind
that once he saw a crime being committed, he had no choice but to pursue
the bad guy through the Oval Office, down the hall to the private study,
whatever the damage, no matter the cost. One man's loss of control
inspired the other's, and we are no better for anything either of them
did.....
"This, then, is the legacy of a year that
cannot end too soon. A faithless President and a fervent prosecutor, in a
mortal embrace, lacking discretion, playing for keeps, both
self-righteous, both condemned, Men of the Year."

Not only is Starr
out of line, but so is the whole conservative movement according to
Time's wisdom. An accompanying story by Time's Richard Lacayo is
headlined, "Where the Right Went Wrong: In backing Starr's witch
hunt, conservatives fell in love with Big Government."

Having spent all autumn advocating the desirability of a censure deal,
without missing a beat, within hours of the impeachment vote many leading
media figures "moved on" to insisting that the Senate must make
a deal to avoid a trial. Here are two illustrations:

-- On Inside
Washington just hours after Saturday's House vote, Nina Totenberg of NPR
and ABC News reminded her fellow panelists of how she predicted
impeachment would prevail and that something must be done so "sanity
will prevail and we'll avoid a trial." She intoned:
"Didn't I say to you that we are marching
off the cliff? Reason tells you we should stop this and get on with the
business of governance. But, there is precious little. I mean I spent most
of today and yesterday half on the phone while I was covering this thing,
with Senators Republican and Democratic, and at the moment everybody's
fondest hope is that the two week hiatus, between now and the new year, in
that period impeachment will sink in and sanity will prevail and we'll
avoid a trial. But there are a lot of people that don't want that to
happen."
Fellow panelist Charles Krauthammer did note:
"If you're Clinton it's a cliff. If you're an American it's
not a cliff."

To Hutchison on
the Sunday, December 20 show: "Now that this is in the hands of the
Senate, would you mind seeing some kind of a censure deal worked out? Or
would you like to see a full blown trial of the President?"

To Lautenberg:
"Are you confident that a deal can be worked out to avert the
spectacle of a trial?"

And back to
Hutchison again: "Senator Hutchison, the poll numbers reveal the
American people don't want the President removed. His approval ratings
are up to 72 percent, Republicans ratings are down. What kind of leverage
do Republicans really have given the conventional wisdom, which admittedly
has been wrong before, that no way are Republicans ever going to get the
67 votes, what kind of leverage do Republicans have against the President
given all that?"
Hutchison: "The Constitution."
Slam.

-- On Sunday's
Today, December 20, co-host Jack Ford picked up on Jonathan Alter's
point that Clinton's August speech failed in that he did not admit lying
and apologize, asking: "You have to wonder, given the politics of
anger that I know you've described here, the toxic atmosphere in the
House, if he had come forward and done all that do you think it really
would have made any difference?"
Instead of holding Clinton accountable for still,
even after 11 months, refusing to acknowledge his lying, Newsweek's
Jonathan Alter held House conservatives culpable:
"That's a really good question because
what ended up happening here was every time he would do something that his
critics demanded, the critics would just move the goal posts a little bit
and so at a certain point he just said I'm tired of playing their game.
So at the end, for instance, when they said all you have to do is just
admit that you lied I think he realized that even if he admitted what they
wanted they would have impeached him anyway..."

-- Sunday on CNN's Late Edition Steve Roberts
of the New York Daily News, and formerly of the New York Times and U.S.
News, ignored the difference between private sexual affairs and lying
about them in court proceedings and using governmental powers to cover
them up, asserting:
"I have great sympathy for Bob Livingston. I
agree with Dick Gephardt. He's an honorable and good man. But it was Tom
DeLay and the other Republican leadership who pulled the pin on this
grenade, tossed it out there, and it exploded and hit Bob Livingston,
because they were the ones, they were the ones who made private sexual
morality an issue in the public..."

The Weekly
Standard's Tucker Carlson cut him off before he could elaborate any
more, remarking "I realize Tom DeLay is responsible for the world's
evil, but to blame him somehow for what happened to Bob Livingston."

A major media figure, apparently serious, actually argued that what makes
"Republicans crazy" about Clinton is not his duplicity or
policies, but "his ability to do two things at once. I think it
really does drive them up a tree." Check out this exchange from
Friday's Washington Week in Review on PBS.

Thomas Friedman,
New York Times columnist: "One of the things that on listening to
this debate that just strikes me, the law and everything else aside,
there's something about Clinton that makes the Republicans crazy. What
is it?"
Michael Duffy, Time magazine's Washington
Bureau Chief: "Yeah, it's true. Part of it I think we saw this week
is his ability to do two things at once. I think it really does drive them
up a tree. He has this extraordinary compartmentalized ability. This week
we saw him on Wednesday go from meetings about impeachment on the Hill to
meetings about Iraq to phone calls to Senators about what will happen
there if it goes on to the Senate, back to writing his statement about you
know. The extraordinary thing about Clinton is he's able to
compartmentalize these stories in ways that lot of Americans are not,
certainly I'm not. And it's hard for, I think, people to understand
how he does his job, how he can do this with all this that's swirling
around him."

NBC anchor Brian Williams, by highlighting how historians supposedly
"will not look kindly" on the impeachment action, opened
Saturday's NBC Nightly News by discrediting the vote led by Republicans.
With the Capitol dome behind him, Williams declared at the top of the
December 19 show:
"Good evening. It has been a day for the
history books here in the nation's capital, though historians may not
look kindly on what transpired behind me here today: William Jefferson
Clinton is now the first elected President to be impeached by the House,
the second President in all of history..."

Peter Jennings befuddled Bill Bennett by asking, if in light of Bob
Livingston's resignation, "you want to re-think your position on
the President?"

At 10:55am ET
Saturday after Bob Livingston made his surprising announcement about
withdrawing his name as a candidate for Speaker, ABC News viewers saw this
exchange during live coverage of the impeachment debate. After Bill
Bennett said he was not sure if Livingston made the correct decision in
deciding to resign, Jennings lectured:
"Here is one of the leaders of a movement in
the Congress which is, who's been after the President for a very long
time for his moral, it all starts with his moral behavior and Miss
Lewinsky and it has brought the country to this moment of impeachment, I
think you'd agree. And now you have a man standing up who admits to
having adulterous affairs over the 33 years of his marriage and you're
not all together sure whether you agree with his notion that it's ground
for resignation."
Bennett replied that the affairs are grounds for
resignation, but that he was not pushed so he set a higher standard and
"in doing so he has created a real problem for the White House. He
has said this is how I have acted, now how will you act? He wasn't
forced into this by his colleagues."
Jennings countered with this hard to follow
argument: "Given the fact that the country now seems to feel we're
having an endless debate about issues which are, the country appears to
think largely subscribe to family matters, you want to re-think your
position on the President?"
Bennett: "Do I want to?"
Jennings: "Uhha."
Bennett: "Not in the least. The President,
as you just heard, lied under oath consistently and over time and that is
why he should be impeached...."

If you see NBC News flying Maria Shriver from Burbank for a live news
event you know it's big entertainment show for the network. They reserve
her for the big stuff like conventions. All day Saturday during live NBC
News coverage of the impeachment debate and votes, from 9am to 2:25pm ET,
NBC and MSNBC viewers were treated to Shriver's liberal political
advocacy instead of the more professional and knowledgeable work an actual
Washington-based correspondent, such as Lisa Myers, surely would have
delivered. (Once MSNBC was on its own at 2:30pm ET NBC's Capitol Hill
reporter Gwen Ifill magically returned to the air.)

NBC put Shriver in
a room somewhere near the House floor and about once every 30 minutes she
got about two minutes to quiz a member live on air. Below are illustrative
examples the agenda she pushed. Before the vote she kept hoping that
Republicans would wimp out and afterward she demanded that Republicans
respond to Democratic assertions that the vote means "the downfall of
he Republican Party." Of course, she never asked a Democrat anything
about why they are standing so enthusiastically behind a man they say
disgraced the presidency. In between she argued Tom DeLay was forcing
members to vote for impeachment and she put on a Valley Girl voice to mock
Republican concerns about Bob Livingston.

-- Just after 9am
ET to Richard Gephardt: "Do you think she [Hillary Clinton], the
President, yourself, you kind of gave an indication, are holding out some
glimmer that people may have said I'm in favor of impeachment but at the
last minute they won't be able to do it?"

-- At about 9:30am ET to Republican impeachment
foe Peter King: "So many people say they're voting one way and when
they get into the ballot box they change their mind. Do you think that
might happen here today, that many of your colleagues have said I'm
going to vote for impeachment, when they actually have to stand up and
impeach the President of the United States they may say, 'you know what,
I'm not going to do it'?"

And:
"Representative Frank was saying to several of us reporters yesterday
that he does not think this is the downfall of Bill Clinton, this is in
fact the downfall of the Republican Party. Do you agree?"

-- At 10:06am ET,
arguing with Republican George Gekas: "Several Republicans I've
talked to told me today you cannot imagine the pressure on people down
there to vote with the Republicans, they'd break your leg if you broke
with them today."
Gekas: "Who said that?"
Shriver: "Oh, somebody told me that."
Gekas: "Well you check with that somebody."
Shriver: "I did. I checked with them and they said the pressure was
so intense from the Republican leadership."
Gekas: "Ask him if he ever talked to me and the answer would be
no."
Shriver: "He didn't use your name but he said the pressure is
unbelievable to stay the course."
Gekas: "Well that's your description of it. I have seen no
evidence."
Shriver: "That's his. Break a leg was his description."
Gekas: "Do you want my answer?"
Shriver: "Sure."
Gekas: "My answer is I have not seen any evidence of that kind of
pressure..."

Shiver seconds
later, still ever hopeful: "Do you think anybody will break, any of
the Republicans who've actually said that they will vote for
impeachment, when push comes to shove and they actually have to stand up
today and vote for the impeachment of the President of the United States
that they'll just say 'I can't do it?'"
Gekas: "I have no evidence of that."
Shriver: "Haven't heard any rumblings of that?"

-- At 11:10am ET to Democrat Marty Meehan, Valley Girl-like, with voice
rising and cadence picking up in her last four words:
"What sounded me quite shocking, was that a
week ago these people were all incredibly behind Livingston. The minute
they hear that he has quote 'strayed from his marriage,' and those are
his words, they're like 'Don't like the guy!'" [first five
words are what she said]
(Note the use of "these people," as if
Republicans are aliens.)

-- At 12:06pm ET to Republican Lindsey Graham, in
a question that in context reflects her shock that he doesn't realize
most are angry at the Republicans: "You said to me before we went on
camera you don't think there's much outrage in the country about this.
How can you say that?"

-- At 1:50pm ET to Democrat Tom Barrett: "We
were just talking, before we came on, about that this is certainly a mark
against Bill Clinton, against his presidency, but it's also a mark
against this Congress and this Congress will be forever known as the
Congress that impeached the President of the United States. And I wanted
to know from you personally how you felt about that?"
(Performing a constitutional duty will leave a
"mark"?)

-- At 2:09pm ET to Republican Ann Northrup:
"Several of your colleagues from the other side of the fence have
said that today marks the downfall of the Republican Party, that it shows
that this party is ruled by extremists. You're in it. True?"
Northrup noted that there are lots of Republican
moderates, to which Shriver retorted: "So you don't buy Congressman
Bonior's assessment that this House, and particularly the people like
yourself, out of touch, out of control?"

You can always count on a little wackiness when Dan Rather is on live for
any length of time. While CBS went to a NFL pre-game show at 12 noon, that
still gave Rather three straight hours on Saturday morning.

-- Funniest Rather
moment. At about 11:15am ET, in the midst of talking with former Senator
Warren Rudman, Rather jumped in and cut off Rudman dramatically, pleading:
"Hold on just a second. Somebody is really shouting on the House
floor. Let's see who that is. Oh, I'm sorry. It's Representative
John Lewis from Georgia who has the microphone again."

If you are
unfamiliar with Lewis, his normal floor speech mode is "full
yell."

-- Wackiest
question. At about 11:50am ET to former Clinton speechwriter Donald Baer:
"Don, help me here. After the Republican sweep led by the now
resigned Newt Gingrich in 1994 when the Republicans had their peak victory
in recent history, President Clinton said that after that, after 1994,
that if you left them, the Republicans, alone that they would burn
themselves out. Now is or is not what we have now a race sort of between
when the Republican burn themselves out or burn the President up?"

Freudian slip of the weekend? Asked by anchor Charlie Gibson to describe
leading House Speaker candidate Dennis Hastert, on the December 19 World
News Tonight on Saturday night Linda Douglass replied:
"Rumbled, charmed, low-key, conciliatory,
someone who can get along with both moderates and Republicans, a veteran,
a nuts and bolts legislator..."

So, if you're a
Republican you are by media definition an extremist. -- Brent Baker

>>>
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